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7/26/11

HORRIBLE BOSSES - REVIEW

In most cases, comedies work depending on how good or clever their original premises are. And if that's true then Horrible Bosses should be amazing.
Its not.

And that it's not is something of a miracle. I mean, you've got Colin Farrell doing the mother of all Michael Keaton impressions with a combover, you've got a perfectly psychotic Kevin Spacey, a masturbating Jennifer Aniston...do you NEED more?

Well good jokes would have been a plus.

Sadly, Horrible Bosses is one of those movies where a bunch of funny dudes are left rambling in loud improv mode for hours as a golden set-up and potential hilarity go to waste. Sure there are some good lines here an there, amidst Charlie Day's relentless high-pitched screaming but a film like this, where the villains and the concept are the real stars, there really is no need to milk our main characters for on-the-spot lols. Try writing jokes next time, perhaps?

I'm just sayin'...

Admittedly, our bosses are still a lot of fun to watch: Spacey's manipulative, jealous wacko and Farrell's "cokehead" twat are both about as appropriately horrible as they get. They are criminally underused though, especially the latter. Aniston's nympho could have been a fun character had she been useful to the plot in any way. Yes she has sex off-camera with Jason Sudeikis...so? Had the filmmakers involved the character in the dark turn the film takes about halfway through we could have had one twisted, fun movie.

As it stands, there really is no reason for us to like these put-upon employees or their respective bosses so what we're left is really is a lot of amusingly silly-looking/sounding humans talking and moving around. The remaining plot and the film carrying it can only do one thing in this case but fizzle out into the black hole oblivion of forgettability.